Sky Our Grandfather

Moon Our Grandmother

Earth Our Mother

I Am Thankful

We Love Each Other

We Are Grateful

We are grateful.

  Very often amongst us people in a hard scrabble to exist we'll say TahTanka, thank you, I appreciate you, I appreciate what you have done.  When it comes to the preservation of culture even taking the time to appreciate seems inadequate.  I don't know if that's just a me thing.  But the preservation of culture makes me feel love and passion.  To some, things probably look like little projects but to lovers of culture those same little projects mean the world.

  My pre-food-filled stomach had me glued to old fashioned Country Store goodies and BAAaacon!  My mind was like, wait, what?  Bacon?  Bacon.

  I was still savoring the smile I received when I got into the Cherohala Visitor's Center.  And, that the State name of Tennessee comes from 

My phone totally died like two days into the camp trip!  Fortunately, back at an afternoon desk at a Knoxville park, I found my handwritten notes.

Tellico Plains, TN

  Lisa Frerichs grew up in Athens, Tennessee but moved to Tellico Plains twenty-five years ago.  We joke about coming by wagon or not coming by wagon.  "I came here by marriage," she smiles and says.  "But there's no place I'd rather be."

  Outside is bright and homey even for a traveler.  It's so different from a crowded subway in a city I need to let my feet feel being here.  The guide maps cartoon place, and then you get there and you get to find the life of the place.

 Just around the corner from a trafficky press of cars, trucks, and RV's food-finding and re-supplying and maintaining vehicles.  The chance to connect with calm and pedestrian.

  Always for me in place the Native Americans beckon.  My family has Indian in us and the stories of our relatives in the West Virginia area have only deepened my awareness of how much we have been humans with different ways co-existing in same place.

  At Panther Creek I'd allowed myself to first wade in the actual creek, then imagine our great, great, great (etc.) "Chief White Eyes" and his daughter "Emily" there, in nature, making me brave enough to wade deeper, see trout-looking rocks under the water, pick a water stick to help me balance, run hands over grooves in rocks where the water's flow must have been at work for a very long time.

  Everywhere in America are the remnants of a more natural existence.  And very often emblems of peoples who considered themselves both individuals and part of something-- family, church, locale, group and place.  We've left place marker and work-in-progress.  And sometimes we have abandoned.  But mostly we've been in a long term relationship with our places.

  Inside I confess to having heard many times about what to do in a bear encounter, but that still not making me feel sure of myself around bears.  Lisa nods gently and says, "It is a possibility you could run into one." I had seen a little one already this summer.  Darker in color than even the shady spots in the forest on both sides of gravel road.  The stuffed bears inside the Visitor's Center (which have been there since it opened) kind of anchor the room.  They aren't bears which have been stuffed, they are incredible, large stuffed animal bears.  I settle into a Black Bear Safety Interpretive Display.

Tellico Plains, 2024

 

  A video/DVD plays atop the display.  Be "Bear Smart" we are advised.  In the production there is a ranger and some others relaying information about black bears.  And they repeatedly call to mind that nature is really their territory.  And that the Forest Service has been mediating between them and us furless-types.  An author of Bears We've Met, Joel Zachary, goes more into depth about the animals.  And, though we need to be aware of our surroundings (like in a city), and minimize attracting smells (like food), there is a long record of interactions between us all, and usually making noise in a non-threatening way is enough to let the bears know...this is a people thing.

 

I saw the sign

I did, I saw it.  First day of school August 8th.  That is coming right up!  Summer always zooms past when we get to July 4th.

  I was.  Over to Lowe's.  Finding remedy for snags in projects and handing out a business card or two.  It's a great time of year for carpentry-painting-landscaping tradespeople to find extra/"side" work because the big projects have to stay on target time and budget-wise.  And as the Lowe's staff reminds over the P.A.--be self-caring in the heat.  Drink water, drink water, drink water.

  Mine?

  919-607-3859, for both sideworks, carpentry-painting-landscaping, and, tutoring

Thnx

July 6th always

 Has some interesting events.  One year we were strongly encouraged to attend anything food-oriented; totally emaciating away.  Another year it was Civil War stuff.  That was coil because we learned that before Our Country was ripped in half, we had lingering State issues from the War of 1812!  Some years there's more of a group effort to at least unify as a body politic even if

Some focus; it works if you work it

   It's rare to find nature, land, place open to the public.  That's why I personally appreciate when "the Box Store" people take care of initial plantings and workers actually maintain a level of sanitation.  Up in Connecticut in a marina brimming with sail and outboard motor boats, over the years I would visit the one little skiff of "dock" where one can imagine.

  A lot of "attractions" facilitate imagination and whet the appetite to do more related to that "lifestyle" or that "industry" or that "option to pursue"...being a Jamboree Bear or space laser shooter.

  From my little pile of ATTRACTIONS HERE, GET YOUR ATTRACTIONS HERE I pull out my newspaper.  The July 1st, 2024 Knoxville Focus should, in my opinion, get some sort of award.  This award would be for not asking, whose afraid of not Virginia Woolf this time, but something more akin to, maybe, thinking beings.  The whole issue does not ask us that but curries thoughtful and thought-provoking words of wisdom.

  As businesses must serve clientele and satisfy customers in order to be successful, so too, shepherds of culture must maintain that stem in a conch shell.  And since we know that even "military" is culture, the responsibilies of balance between giving culture room to breathe and controlling culture have become even more critical and involve even more critical thinking.

  It may not sound like "wisdom" to drum up memories.  May not sound like it to explain in tiny increments why a person is who a person is.  May not sound like wisdom to relay stepping stones on pathway or share information about doubts-- whether or not to proceed, whether or not to take something a step further.  It may not even sound like wisdom for a community to witness in word, that point.

  Section B leads with a weekly column by Dr. Jim Ferguson and as it is with many of us, there's seasonal activity to post out updates about, and associations in thinking/being/doing that may or may not have relevance to a writing piece.  The tone of this piece is personal narrative alongside the whole big picture up to that point.  For Mr. Ferguson the point of personal opinion necessary comes up in regards toiletry.  For others it comes up regarding forestry.  Mr. Ferguson is the goalpost keeper of a column in this instance.  It is his job/duty to produce 'column stuff'.  This week's column is a very brave processing of where we as individuals are allowed to be.  And I appreciate his co-awareness factor demonstrated in lines like: "It's not just soldiers and first responders who have civic duties.  This is our tour of duty: we have a country to save.". And, "should we try to accommodate...." In that I can hear that this person is aware of the existence of others, and that as a nation, we are a we.

  I also appreciate this week's "From a distance" by John J. Duncan Jr., for its frankness and openness about some of the issues that come up for citizens at this point in an election year cycle.

  And appreciation needs to go to Dr. Black as well.  His column stuff this issue fits his own thinking into a spectrum of education and economy.

  All three writers opened up chests of life experience and laid out on page not necessarily a way forward for every person but a standard for communicating position; for having a commitment in defending and protecting culture.

Thanks,

L.L. Lane

USA

Near the old sphere

 Between Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge it's hard to know what you are feeling.  Traffic streaming in all directions.  Your choice of at least two hundred area attractions.  The postCOVID mix of acceptance and ambition on economy.  We wonder at ourselves in each other. 

 Somebody else honked where it says NO HONKING IN TUNNEL; Should I?  

  America at Fourth of July has always been the perfect blend of union and independence America.  Even in years when its scary unknown-exactly about the future we know who we are.

  

  A couple cracks! and POPS of fireworks getting closer to the holiday.

  A Gateway to the Smokies, Townsend toasts this elevation with a loop of finely paved road with nice slopes and curves (perfect practice for the Blue Ridge Parkway) and camping at Cades Cove.

Sunset.  In the distance an urban center's heat rises and flattens the bottom of a cloud bank.  The straightline clouds are eagle-gray in the box of pastels.

  "Got somethin' down yonder," a voice assures another voice.  Optimism, sight unseen, to any "problem".

Night falls.  Traffic sorts itself, coming, going.  Settling in for the night.

  The way to the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont is as much public estate as it is an edge of backcountry.  For me it's just as weighty American as the Lincoln Memorial or the White House.  It's both barometer on how we're doing taking care of at least some nature, and, it's proof that the dark green of "park"/conservancy is as steadfast as the red, white, and blue of Old Glory.

  In the Smokies people work together as much as they work individually to protect and defend our natural resources.  A ranger's station in the area has some copies of Smokies Guide, The Official Newspaper of the Smokies, Summer 2024, and I'm able to catch up on stats like merit badges.  In a feature called GSMNP we can see the work pays off.  Here there are 31 species of salamanders; 69 species of mammals; 10,400 species of insects; and more than 1000 species new to science found in the park!

  America has, in the Great Smokies National Park system...more than 250 species of birds, 2900 miles of streams, 848 miles of trails, 135 species of trees, 3500 species of fungi, 500,000 acres of land, and +90 historic structures.

  There are educational programs.  There is coordinated and successful trail rehabilitation, preservation, conservation and management.  The Parks system works year after year keeping facilities up to par, making accessibility improvements, and working with all kinds of professionals to see how best to hold the fort down so that GSMNP remains a stalwart and a beacon.

Vikings & British &

   I'm chatting with Dustin of Viking Blade Supply in Historic Gatlinburg while tourists "off-roading" from "tourist traps" do the eight-mile loop of the Great Smoky Arts & Crafts Community.

 

 His place also gets called Viking Blade Forge, the non-profit side of the company, "which gets veterans into forging as a form of therapy," Dustin explains.  "We tell people, it definitely helps."

  Dustin's getting stuff ready for a show tonight.  Headed to a beverage oasis in Sevierville, TN to see what sells best.  He's one of the best conversationalists I've met on this leg of my journey.

  Really exuberant energy.  He dug out a Viking blade for me to check out.  It's not ready yet and has a duskycharcoalish type film on it.  I dig the weight of it and can see choosing it as my one tool for an into-the-woods-sojourn from glamping and car camping.

  We easily fall into talking about getting ready for holidays.  Artisans and crafters have instincts about yearly schedules like farmers.  In this area of Tennessee where mountain meets farmland people are always tending to multiple projects.  Even when we find ourselves away from home and studio...we're thinking about that hot pepper, or being inspired by the shapes and sounds of nature and others' inventions.

  Next door Don's striping the edges of leather belts.  He's been here building up his mountain arts practice--Smokies' Edge--for many, many years.  In his early twenties he'd bicycled through the many states of the New England region.  While we're talking a visitor from Ohio stops in and the conversation touches upon the Wright Brothers and the Outer Banks' Kitty Hawk.  The Chimney Swifts nestling in the chimney don't rouse the cat.  I look over handmade arrowheads.  And post Don's picture sporting the shop here, buy local logo.

Don,

Owner of

Smokies' Edge 

for 40 years!

  I'm making way to a British watering hole in my 13th annual British Car Show tee from Historic Rugby, Tenn.

  At Two Ravens Tool & Craft I check in with Brooke Mitchell.  She and her husband Alan, started their craft loop shop in October of '22.  She shows me what they carry, like: handmade jewelry by Brooke; "My husband does the woodturning," she says.

I have to ask, "And what is woodturning?" She explains it has to do with using the wood lathe to sculpt wood.  The store has local cherry bowls at this time.  As shopowners Brooke & Alan are ever balancing issues like keeping inventory on the shelves and pricing items for the particular market of Smoky Mountain Tourism.

  I ask how they're feeling about being here.  Alan's stopped in for a break from landscaping.  Brooke shares that there's "a bit of a learning curve but coming up on our second year, we're feeling pretty good." 

  "We love the mountains that's why we're here," Brooke says.  "Well," Alan says, "The fishing could be better." "He gets tired of trout fishing," Brooke laughs.  Alan says he likes "Bass and Catfish fishing best, but it's too far to drive." Alan likes a challenge but Brook explains, "We rarely close the shop."

  Down the road apiece the Hungry Bear BBQ's picnic tables are getting sunbathed in the mounting Tennessee summer sun.  The cooking smells mingle with an occasional breeze that helps weather a dumptruck-size woodpile.  It's a Crow that squawks on pole-and-line.  But I have no idea what's being said.

 

  I like to cool my too hot to trot up at Look Rock but with so many arteries pumping culture American throughout sea and shore and me resigned to hold down the fort no matter who might be taking the lead, this time I went to a special stop-spot.

  On my 2024 visit to Panther Creek I was working on a story called "The Walkie Talkie".  But when it started getting busy with holiday traffic there wasn't enough quiet for me.  I debated, stay or go, retreat time goes by fast, so I can't afford to lose working time.  I took a walk to where I'd revisited Panther Creek about a decade after my first time there.  In that my mind recalled "characters" and fellowships forged in the forest.  And also America pulling and putting our individual selves in place.  Especially in times of "dislocation" putting ourselves in place is, I think, how to survive generations.

  I spied the depression beneath a mix of leaves.  The voices of our-agers in my memory warned, be careful dear.  Sometimes my temperament says I know, I know and I got called on that.  Bickering amongst people who generally care and are thorough with whatever we are doing had to do with what seemed like an enormous split-up of many creatives...fact or fiction?  Realism or drama?  Some editors were practically making wounds with pointing fingers and writing instruments.  WHHHHhhhhhy?????  The slightly less-in-the-know of us seemed to smoke signal and the concept draped the Southeast mountain region.

  Dusky and chirpy; anonymity formed us into figures careful of when to jump down someone's throat, the you better think twice about that Mr's and Mrs's, and the FINE just fines.  Lumps of crestfallen and processing and oblivion; fleeting glances, chanced and chancing; enthralled by forest of us.  "Running from...running to..." Hot war had the lines between science and creativity whisper-passing along news and word.  The I can't says couldn't be said, so

  Muddy-covered Mexican boots stomped off into Cornstalk yoga poses.  Alone time at a base camp l produce poetry or a pile of cigarette butts.  Or both.  Imagine stacks of shredded newspaper as remnant of the way it was.  Embattled in our own house and the United States on brinks where there's no more time to argue: Isolation?

  Don't do that dear.

  Do what?

  That.  That which you are doing.

  I'd broken my minutes into seconds and was working on nano-seconding my every breath and movement.  Fighting anxiety by stilling quicksilver and the biological urge to propagate and produce.  At that moment I was holding onto a vine with one hand and trying to prove strong enough to knock over potential campfire stick wood.  I froze to words of mastering self when it wouldn't be right there with you.  "Look at your foot." It was about to step on what could be booby-trapped, could de-balance, could "broke my nose that way once."

  "Speaking of broken noses

  "GREAT!  I found you guys using this," a truly nerdy and proud of it guy crackled the forest floor in a cacophony of twigs snapping and ferns crumpling and stopped near the bunch of us holding up a thing that looked like a remote control car box with antenna.

  "Where you been Smoot?"

  So-and-so had somehow acquired a car to come out soon if, tested in the desert, and Smoot had his taste of the Dragon and hickoried or whatever Beam.  Everyone could tell he was a little too perky compared to his usual mood. Someone walked over put his forehead to Smoot's and saidasked, "You know I love you man, right?!" "Yah, yah" and the someone pushed Smoot into sitting down.

  "That was a Latin flower name," a sports jacketed guy rolled his eyes, "Was being the operative word."

  Was or wasn't, right or wrong, wasn't it wonderful?  Two guys said the same thing at the same time like reciting the verse of an ancient Greek ode.  "Did y'all plan to ruin my day or is this spontaneous ruination?" The local guy who'd been telling me known-history of the natural area around the sink hole asked.  Everyone grew quiet and less fidgety.  And everyone was staying quiet as we heard vehicle tires squishing gravel and rolling closer on the road.

  I dropped an armful of sticks and peeked around a checkerboard barked tree.  "It's just Jim." It was.  Thought he'd roll on through to another campsite but he rolled to a stop right where we were out of sight.  He bumbled over to the fresh but rainstormed cut at the edge of the forest road and called up, "You in there?"

  "I suppose," I sighed.  "Why?"

  "Wait'll you see."

  "See what?" The local history guy asked.  The others had silently scattered.  Just as nobody was supposed to be disturbing the nature in what could get deemed "preserve", nobody was supposed to be talking to each other in the various science groups...especially as "controls".  "The better question is who might you be?" Jim didn't answer at first then chortled a "you sound like that catepillar in that fairy tale what's it was."

  It was sort of a scholarly stand off so I scooped up the sticks for the nights cooking fire and tried to hide the plant that also came up in the scoop.  "I saw that," local history guy said.  I put down the sticks and replanted it.  "Go see what's up and I'll bring the sticks." At the base of the sink hole hill I gave Jim a big hug.  We both felt better after we had a forest marital spat that was really about driving self crazy rather than do something.  We'd had a concilatory lunch, raw tuna and shelled peanuts I think it was.  "How's your day Jim?"

  "Been a doozy," He looked in my eyes, "But not real boozy.  How 'bout you Lara?" Relief washed through me.  While I'd been party to umpteen lectures and sermons on not fucking around while we were all running around in the woods trying TO: I'd had to get serious about "not even one beer." And clear-eyed and smiling truth authentically made Jim also smile and give me a big hug.  "You two may want to consider getting a room.  I know a lodge," local history guy managed almost snarky.

  "What is it?  Let's see."

  Jim fiddled with the license plate and pulled a screwdriver out from behind it, popped the sedan's trunk.  The conglomerate of stuff in there made it not readily apparent what I should be seeing.  Just then a banshee scream happened.  "I didn't think it was that bad." Jim started to close the trunk on instinct.  The banshee scream happened again.  "I mean, I knew it had been a while since I got off my ass and did something like

Scream

clean out my trunk, but," his arm raised the trunk door.  "And what's that smell?" Local history guy questioned.  The scream climbed itself into an operatic roar then quiet.  Jim lowered the trunk door and wrung the screwdriver like a wash rag.  "You think there's correlation going on here?" He put one finger on the trunk.  But no scream.  "I want to see what it is Jim." "Yes, I want to show you but I'm not sure this is the best time." Local history guy blinked.  "But here in the forest Jim, the people seem to have a different sense of time." "Indeed they do, say history guy, do you happen to have the time?" He, without looking at his wrist, unbuttoned a shirt cuff with no button and held his wrist with no watch up to his unbroken gazing, then dipped his head to tell the time. 

  A man and a woman in tight pants both and clean leather jackets moved from tree to tree, first one person, then the other, taking turns in plain sight, a ballet.

  "Why do you ask?" Local history guy did not look up from his hairy arm with no watch on it to tell the time.

  "I might have been given some insight into when 

  Just then two people came squirming in one sleeping bag out of a tent pitched offpad that no one had seen.  They squirmed over fallen leaves, branches, and growing vegetation, down the freshly turned embankment and across the road.  "Am I the only one seeing this?" I asked to local history guy's gaze in the opposite direction and Jim rifling through the trunk to find something apparently fast.  Jim turned to look.  "Oh that?!  Well, you've heard how everything in Texas is bigger right?!"  "Yeah." "Well, in Tennessee our mosquitos and caterpillars beat the cowboy pants offah Texas, hands down"

  Hands down, a voice was saying out of sight at about the same time.

  "What is going on?" I demand-asked.

  "Ask me no questions, I'll tell you no lies," local history guy said as he put hands in pocket.  "Did you see them?" The voice out of sight called.  Local history guy repeated his momentary mantra but walked forward, used his chin to close Jim's trunk, and with hands in pockets leaned against the car in a casual pose.  Jim went into a bubbling brook of could be-sortas, not really maybe's.  Wouldn't that depend on which them?  Defining "see" logistically.  And there's always tense...what is that "did" Lara, you're the writer

  I gasped and let out a loud HUH at the same time.  "I AM NOT the writer."

  "Oh, there's more than one?"

  "Of wha, what?" Jim actually stuttered just a little.  Nevertheless he put his giant paws in local history guy's shoulders and moved him to leaning against the passenger side of the car.  He opened the trunk shuffled donut tire, jack, and rug towards the front pile of stuff and withdrew two sticks.

  " YOU, Lara Lynn Lane ARE  A writer," and he dubbed me on the shoulder.

  "Yeah but, but

  "No buts

  "But, I didn't," I swallowed hard, "Write the," whispering then "manifesto."

  "This piece of shit?" Jim asked as he rummaged through the trunk pulling out first one, then two, then more and more papers.

  As we got to the tables where the University was letting people put in pre-registration for Courses requests, I blew out a breath, and it was like my summer-life flashing before my eyes.

  There were a lot of people in the area, all ages, and some I could believe were waiting to get going on their workshops and nature hikes, but there were landlubbers too, I could tell.

  I almost turned toward the outhouses to run back to the outside.  I laughed out loud recalling the bug lady going around and around in her barefeet on the piney soil outside the laboratory.  A man gently chasing and trying to catch her with a butterfly net.  They'd eventually spiraled into a hug and truth, she said, "I'm not ready."

  I'd almost made it to changing direction not the outhouses, I'll go when a person sitting on a real rock fence stood, much taller than the rest.

  Not kidding a power struggle campfire dance then ensued.  At first it was avoidance maneuvers.  The other mingled lightly to make moves through the meandering crowd.  I picked a piece of Park literature and pretended a read.  Thought I was keeping eye on.  A sunspotted hand took the flyer and said, "You might want to read it rightside up." She tried to pull it to correct it.  I did not let go.  We wrestled it to a wooden bulletin board and she snagged it as she said, "Look, he picked someone else." I did look.  He appeared to have.  She looked through a worn stuffed rabbit purse and mumbled something about couldn't find tacs.  I flicked open my pocket knife and told her just use this.  And I walked away.

  None of the wildcats or Vols would tell her where I was.  It was Gggrreat!  Until the forest itself seemed to funnel us into the Vee.  On some of those first tree talks we even peeked at each other to see.  "They don't call us that anymore, Lara."

  "Why not?"

  "Well, it's my understanding that the Vocational schools have reached a certain academic level in their, the, uh, the word "mentor" came from that camp."

  "THAT'S  NOT a camp.  Those are OUR PEOPLE."

^^^^^••••••••••••••^^^^^^^^........... .

Winding way

A Site Reading

  It's been something to check in on places discovered and learned about thirty years ago when I was in my early twenties.  When I got back to the Holston neighborhood in Knoxville, I was like

  Where is everyone?

  The flints of creativity like coal embers saved in a coal box overnight had us all in the throes.  Survival not of the fittest, but of gifts and talents sometimes ravaging, sometimes true gold, always demanding balance.

  It's a something something to grasp that genocide is group stuff but its all individuals in the camps, forcing survival (or not).  Some of us looked at each other with bleary eyes, so tired, some sick and tired.  Dug deep all.  Kernels to share, to carefully pry from personal.  A musical note, the right word, a leave me alone, coughing spitting fits and promises.  Dreams deferred reclamation.  The campfire in a barrel.  Independence from oppression.  Getting back to work.

  We acknowledged fleeting, this sturdy shelter of a friend.  And shug'd I'll knows and can't waits.  Vowing everlasting who I am.  It was clutching scattered pieces of dreams dashed for most of us.  And desperate to bridge divide, dam overflow streaming from disparity and the dual nature of Capitalist society, someone enunciated.  Like a porcupine, group senses radar'd and reared to new arrivals.

  "YEAH WELL YOU'RE CORNER OF THE WORLD STINKS" the Puerto Rican woman wasn't yelling, "Ooooo an expressive one," a dancer cited in the unofficial Holston Chronicles.  Some ladies who'd been funded to teach hygiene and personal care were still visiting as budgets were slashed and bareboned us wrestled with the finer points of that'll cost ya.  Lice-ridden clothing had to be burned.  What had been shovelsfull of needles and glass pipes was down to a dull roar in our nexus.  The Knoxville nexus.  D.C. was changing hands again.

  Kickin' it or getting crummy?  We all started saying it like the island royalty guy.  Would've been a lot of ships come in through the film industry but Oakland was on fire and L.A. drained itself with strikes and a smoggy complacency.  So here were actors and actresses from every neck of the woods.  "Naw man, this is Brooklyn," a Blinger taking a crap in an orange bucket said of his tent.  "You looking for Philly, that'll make ya giggle without the shits."

  " Whadda you?  The fucking fortune teller?" A wilderness medicine "student" asked, but was ready to bolt, gave me the sign, and quickly added, "You're shit smells like cardboard.  Take these laxatives."

  "What about profellatix?  Got any of those I can use on you?"

  Outside noonish.  The gaggle tickled the grapevine and we'd implored Whitney Houston to make an appearance.  In the accordian fan of territory and trial by fire (the way most human activity happens...we always want to say "organically" but the pouty scientists--all in the same boat with funding--remind and remind that's not correct, technically) miles of food pantry partakers and partiers alike were wagon wheeling urban centers.  "Drive bys" were mounting; lay lows were issued; pot smokers were giggling; and in the shadow space

  in the shadow space

  "Why that shadow move?"  A paranoid "motherfucker" was crouched in the corner of a cardboard box toddler-fenced off area.  "Because of the campfire."  Silence.  Plunge.  "Get some shade over here," a plain-clothed military nurse ordered.  Others went to scrounge.

  Pulling a strip of plastic kiddie pool up I saw slugs.  A naturalist who'd never been to the city knelt with magnifying glass and flashlight.  "Just slugs."  "No; it isn't."  The wet earth black and slimey.  The slimey oil slicked.  Oil slick rainbow in the light.  The top of my head hair-fry.  A pen knife to gently pull the slimey away and red clay pot hole ringed with sandy soil just beneath the peat moss.  "Wannah look?"  I did.  Pieces of mulch pressed into layer of dirt.  Tweezers to remove such splinters and shards.  Magnifying glass.  Teeny tiny larvae and such.  The wigglers and writhing.  "Don't touch.  Anything in this area could be parasitic."  I did not.

  Hobos with umbrellas, silky scarves and sea shell bells on belts and held on with clothespins and safety pins, moved from alley to alley somewhat standing apart but then would closer, closer.

  "How'd you get here?"  Someone would ask of way.  Is there a way to...

  Up in the topspots, round edges of the funnels, ridges bald and canopied, the same questions were being asked.  Highways littered with cars and trucks.  Some towns blocking traffic.  Other mountains poison darting STAY AWAY.  It was difficult to get around.  "Outstanding!"  A Raymond-ever-the-optimist would say to "news" like "just upstanding citizens".  An equality of American.  Internationals like ice cream sprinkles in a gold panning of Green Card.

  "THIS PLACE HASN'T changed a bit," A booming then hushing voice reported of the forest.

  "YES it has," I let my grumpy be known.  Cleaning by raking the trampled leaves campsite had revealed the odors of people like cattle in the woods.  Herding to distance from tragedy.  Urine and poo and burnt stuff.  The way cemeteries linger decomposition, nights spent were the next day's revelations in the nostrils.

  Up creeks, down creeks.  Not far from corridors.  Trickle spots and rapids.  Trash bags, rogue garbage.  Fevers beating us.

  U.S. determined and determining.

  "Just a few days rest," a pioneering natural doctor's hand was zipping her tent shut.  She turned to look at us and saw our mix of disappointment and orphaned baby bird.  "I promise," she said and finished zipping up her retreat from the inside.  We just stood there at first.  She penned a pair of eyes on her big toe and stuck that out of the bottom of the tent door.  We eyed each other.  Free time.  What are we going to learn?!

  A pry bar creaked open a crated field hospital.  Bins and bins of latex gloves.  I thought of us in the woods.  It took four days to get a hiker off a slab of rock jutting out some twenty feet or so beneath a picnic area.  And the wilderness medical people with some clueless civilian-types, myself included, had had to improvise.  Flattened, air-sucked out bags of hypodermic needles with tubing in the field hospital shipment.  I thought of us in the woods, learning.

  "GIVE ME THAT," the forest fairy in a tutu said as he grabbed the drinking straw out of the cup.  "But I gave at the office," the other guy said if donating items for a rescue.

  Way before a boot stepped on a broken lens....

  That particular election year was like the Game of Thrones gathering on D.C.'s horizons.  As with the Dust Bowl D.C. didn't seem to notice.  And there was a terrible loss of life to competitive infighting.  Just as soon as someone planted a r,w,&b pinwheel it'd get stolen and used, or stolen and sold, or just gone.  A lot of middle roaders brushed it off as kids and psychopaths.

  Others found it in our faces at every turn.  Or would try and stay out of thr way and get attacked for doing so.

  "War's ON," differently heighted punk haired pukes loping back into designated-a-park parking lot chomped on gum and tobacco and lollipop sticks saying.

  Some teenieboppers literally repeated every word those cats said, so down the alley between cardboard boxes and tents and carpart "homes" the grapevine echoed the two words.

  "Just sayin'" a girl said to a guy.  He punched her in the face.

  "What he do dat fer?" A knitter seeing asked nobody in particular.  Asking the meaning of anything at the time rarely brought quick answer.  This time though, after the girl reeled back and cradled face, she aksed him, "Can I aks you sumpin'?" The guy pulled down a tank too over his chest tattoo and rolled up his tightie whities and didn't say yes or no.  After a few minutes of shoving things into a kid's school backpack, black, he asked, "You wanna know if I'm leaving?"

  While it was corporate spying and stealing science samples up in the timberline, whole days were spent in city "underground" so that music-in-the-making may or may not transpire in surviving a night.  One partner even painted a partner to look like the bricks lining the grate of an impromptu speakeasy so that even if he actually fell asleep during audition week she could kick the sidewalk from where she would. Not. Budge.

  Some of the naturalists even had a darker side.  Whole chunks of alleyways were nasty mean girl territory.  You'd be like tested for amount of cause.  You may or may not have made it any further "in" or "out" over hours worth of lifetime.  'Course, some of the incremental wasting of life in no movement possible had more to do with the broader demographics, marketing, and "gang stuff".

  While most Americans did/do not care to see, bag cheaters hurled off cliff to chain pen, a Hitler mounting stone fortress to rally, gang rape, glossy magazine hollowgrams of product-to-be parties, there are pursuers of such lifestyles/worlds/thrones.  Like a harvest of fresh energy for particular windmills and grind machines the United States seemed more ending Civil War than contemporary decade.  Because it all trailed together in the trapsing abouts, shut out ofs, and general lack of cure for chaos and unable to gain control.  For all the ganging up, sneaking around, fuck offs and fine, fines America was still America.

  One night by the campfire by myself frustrated that the talking sticks, the most beautiful, naturally ornate and seemed tailored to be awesome talking sticks werw not making just be a storyteller.  It just so happened that as I sat there feeling miserable two trees came out of the forest shadows and I looked at my cigarette to make sure I wasn't smoking anyone's last one stash.  And I saw that the trees were wearing leaf-covered sneakers.  I sighed.  "How can I help?"

  Long story short the People were ready.  Or as ready as each individual was going to get.  And many, many people needed to use as much space as the Mainstream was making in order to go off and be really creative; get back to scholarship and science and math; follow up witg nutritionists and psychologists; pay car insurance, re-up on Green Cards, and all that jazz.

  "Soooo, would this be criminal or in any way illegal?  Me helping you forest of trees?"

  The trees shook their heads no.

  The ingenious ethers had allowed enough time for scrimmages over trail direction in regards flow of traffic and exactly where and which lines on maps were "sanctuary".  In the time of cities realizing that by nature of their organization could not possibly be truly "sanctuary cities" and in the passionate outpourings that were/are developing language and action pertaining to human rights people came to life-saving conclusions.  There had been points along the process when even some world leaders had been "ferried" through a territory by others picking up and putting down a length of board.  Whole weeks of silence or only nonsense talk.  No shortage of escaping enemy.  Likewise, no small amount of failures, some overcome and some not.  And at that point liaisons and leaders and the people had hacked out enough framework to move forward.

  Fairies and tigers and trees, Oh my.

  Others were ready to take a step back.

  At "transfer stations" some people were reconnected with documents they may have otherwise have been permanently parted with, and were relieved of their burdens...like, sadly, a bunch of junk they'd been made to cary.  Rangers helped people orient where they'd made entry on maps.  And like at borders, asked people to declare what they might be most interested in in terms of camping.

  Still others were miles and miles from the mountains when they made pacts to "time share" forest time.  A break from urban homelessness!  Some people had even set their homes aling the way up as like lighthouses and way stations.

  Day and night people let go of the weary to the bones and re-energized.  And at night it was considered very lucky to find a fallen star.  Fallen stars had a lot of wisdom.